RISULTATI RICERCA

Malattia d'Alzheimer: linguaggio e comunicazione impliciti Patients with Alzheimer disease are known to lose the ability to talk and even think with words. However, they show a great sensitiveness to empathy, and an ability to communicate their emotional state in a correct way, using face expression, attitude, voice modulation, look and behaviour. The question here is to know whether such patients have the ability to interact with their entourage in a completely implicit (unconscious) way. This leads us to work clinically, using the hypothesis that well shaped thoughts are built on affective thought-matrix that can be involved in intuitive exchange, especially between people with strong relationships.

La depressione nell'anziano fragile istituzionalizzato Depression is one of the leading disorders affecting mental health among nursing home elderly residents. Its higher prevalence among institutionalized subjects is due to its complex and interactive relationship with comorbidity, disability and cognitive impairement, while the role of transition to the nursing home as a risk factor is uncertain. Depression decreases the quality of life and is related to worse functional, health and cognitive outcomes. It is often under-recognized due to its somatic presentation and to the presence of dementia. Although several antidepressant drugs have been demonstrated to be effective and well tolerated in the frail elderly patients, the management of depression should include non pharmacological interventions and a greater attention by nursing home staff to the overall quality of care.

Psicologia clinicadell'obesità in età geriatrica Eating disorders (in particular those disorders that are correlated with a condition of obesity) are becoming more significant in elderly population too. This could represent a new challenge in the field of Clinical Psychology, both as regards the investigation and the study of the phenomenon, both as regards the clinical aspects and the need to develop effective and efficient diagnostic protocols and therapeutic treatments to support elderly persons. The experience of the clinical lab of the Istituto Auxologico Italiano IRCCS is reported using the results of a observational study that involved 180 patients with obesity (more than 64 years old) in the San Giuseppe hospital, an Italian centre of excellence in the treatment of eating disorders and obesity.

L'abuso negli anziani: un fenomeno emergente Elderly abuse frequency has grown together with the increment of over 65 people. Changed social conditions, particularly within family structure, and prolonged hope of life favour elderly isolation so that old people must be cared by relatives or be lodged in nursing home. The risk to be abused depends on selfsufficiency. Starting from this point of view most common elderly abuse are described looking for at actions employed, in Italy and in other countries, to know and prevent these phenomena.

Il burnout degli operatori geriatrici: equilibrio e discordanza tra persona e lavoroJob burnout is a complex problem, which entails different factors whose origins are to be searched both within the individual and the objective work conditions; it does not arise suddenly, but it is rather subject to a gradual development. The aforementioned problem is a process characterized by symptoms that begin to emerge after a prolonged exposure to stressful work conditions; it evolves constantly and gradually and it manifests itself in the form of a chronic nervous breakdown, which then leads to cynicism and total detachment from work. The geriatric social worker, who is continuously faced with dilemmas such as illness chronicity, especially psychiatric disorders, gives us the example par excellence of a social worker, who is at high risk of suffering from job burnout and who requires the organization he works for to provide him with the support he needs and the possibility to share his experience. In the described experience, the effort made by the organization has appeared to be of high significance in reducing the discrepancy existing between the person and the job allowing the social worker to better adapt to the environment and to find a greater balance within the professional setting.

Attività fisica, salute e cognitività nell'anzianoAfter a brief mention of the damage caused by a sedentary behaviour as well as of the effects of physical activity on the organism of the elderly, the authors provide a review of the literature on the positive effects of physical activity on morbility and mortality, on life quality, and on the preservation of independence. Moreover physical activity may positively influence cognition and dementia, thus substantially contributing to reach the goal of a successful aging.

Nuove relazioni e immagine dell'anziano nel processo di assistenza informaleThis paper aims to investigate the image of old person in healthcare professionals for the elderly, with regard to implementing suitable relationship and welfare patterns. For this purpose, a sample of 21 foreign healthcare workers for the elderly, attending both formation and professional qualification courses, were administered with the Twenty Statements Test (TST) (Khun et al., 1954) to evaluate their Self image. Then they were administered again with the TST but they were asked to fill it as if they were just the old person they have to care. The data were collected through a specific code (adjusted from Belloni Sonzogni et al., 1994) for both such a self-representations. A significant link between the Self image of the healthcare workers for the elderly and that related to the old person was found. First, both self-image of healthcare workers for the elderly and old personrelated image were caracterized above all by self-descriptions concerning Private Self but not to Public Self. Second, self-descriptions of healthcare professionals for the elderly mostly regardered positive traits of personality; on the contrary, those related to old people were focused above all on negative physical and existential topics. Furthermore, healthcare workers for the elderly, trying to identify with old people, tended to assign them, on the whole, the own selfcentered image. The implications of these outcomes in order to promoting a perspective of empowerment of elderly image by the light of the complex relationship among old person, healthcare worker for the elderly and familiar caregiver were discussed.

Riattivare la memoria nell'invecchiamento: l'intervento strategico-metacognitivo A metacognitive strategy training was developed for old adults to improve their cognitive performance. 133 old adults participated at 9 training sessions. Results showed the efficacy of this type of intervention in improving cognitive performance and metacognitive attitudes in older adults. Moreover, a significant increase from post-test performance to a follow-up, conducted after six months, was found in memory performance. Taken together these findings highlight the importance of a training program that integrates teaching the use of mnemonic strategies with metacognitive principles to improve old adults’ memory ability.

Il ruolo della pratica e delle istruzioni nei training di memoria per anzianiThe present study analyzes the effectiveness of memory training in elderly people. The validity of the training is measured by evaluating the capacity to generalize the strategies to new material. Indeed, the transfer of the strategies on new tasks represents one of the main problems of memory interventions in aging. For this reason, two groups of elderly participants (younger vs. older elderly people) have been trained to apply two memory strategies (i.e., interactive images and sentence generation) to two memory tasks: paired associates and free recall of words. Moreover, instructions on how to apply the strategies to other material have been provided. Data show that both age groups took advantage from the training. The efficacy of the training is confirmed by the generalization effect that is equally present in all participants. Significantly, it seems that the capacity to learn how to use the strategies without practice is maintained in older adults as well.

Modificazioni del sonno e processi di memoria nell'anziano Aging is accompanied by changes in the sleep quality, quantity, and architecture. The main changes are a measurable decrease in the ability to initiate and maintain sleep accompanied by a decrease in the proportion of the deeper, more restorative slow-wave sleep and REM sleep in the healthy elderly. Impaired ability to initiate and maintain adequate sleep may be a marker of increased neurocognitive dysfunction. Given the well-established relationship between the characteristics of sleep and the off-line consolidation of new information in memory, there is increasing interest to ascertain how age-related changes in sleep architecture modify this process with respect to the type of information (declarative and procedural). Recent experimental and clinical investigations on this issue converge to indicate that the consolidation function of sleep decreases progressively in physiological aging (and early for procedural compared with declarative knowledge) and abruptly in pathological aging, which is often accompanied by sleep disorders.

La valutazione dei bisogni nell'anziano. Versione italiana del can elderlyThe growth of elderly population request the development of tools for the assessment of needs. This can be useful also for health care agency for services planning and implementation. The Camberwell Assessment of Needs for the Elderly can be an adeguate instrument for this aim. In this study we present the data about the validation of the Italian version of the instrument. 142 elderly, living in different setting, are interviewed. The CANElderly is also administered to 142 family caregivers, caring for the elderly person and to 77 paid caregiver assisting elderly at home or in residential setting. The result show that the instrument had good psychometric properties such as concurrent validity, stability over time and inter-rater agreement. Data show also that psychological and social needs of elderly are frequently unmeet. We can conclude that the italian version is an easy instrument for need assessment in the elderly; another important aspect is relative to the under-recognition of psychosocial needs of this population and the possible consequences of that in terms of disability and quality of life.

Rapportio tra capacità percettive e immaginative nell'anziano The battery devised by Bartolomeo, Bachoud-Lèvi and Chokron, (2001), including both perceptual and imagery tests, was administered to 45 adults ranging in age from 52 to 80 years. As far as relationships between perception and imagination are concerned, positive correlations were found only in tasks requiring the processing of symbolic materials (letters, words, numbers), suggesting the relative independence of imagery from perception. Regards to the relations among imagery tasks, two groups of tests, positively correlated one another, emerged: tasks involving the construction of mental pictures and tasks asking to detect the detailed shape of stimuli. Imagery skills appeared to be articulated in different patterns also in elderly people.

Il divenire e il riformarsi delle relazioni nell'ultima fase della vita For elderly subjects the new relationships after separation, divorce, widowhood, as well as those of their children, prefigure further fragility vectors for the potential degenerative action but can be also signs of improvement and realization of self confidence for the re- coordination action. These existential conditions involve, from elderly persons well-being point of view, problems susceptible of attention, not less reserved for the care and attention to some relationships in other younger ages of life span. The chance of identifying possible elderly population differential conformation patterns, in evolving of their interactive ex- periences, is remarked, with special reference to dynamics between the members of reassembled and widened families. Is supported the importance to adopt preventive and therapeutics optics, centered on sense of self confidence theory in an intergenerational perspective

Vecchio: sostantivo o aggettivo? The research which has been undertaken in psychogerontology and neuroscience has allowed to refute prejudicial opinions as regards the negative prospects of aging. There are active, enterprising and creative old people as well as others less fortunate, in situations of illness or disability. The creative process, past experiences, the possibility of expressing oneself, and communicating with others, particularly younger people, to undertake voluntary service especially with less fortunate people of the same age and the use of ones resources and individual abilities allows many old people to strengthen and rediscover the spiritual substance and sense of self in terms of both their own identity and memories. Each individual person grows old in different ways, conforming to their biological, psychological, social and cultural factors. The aging process can be the complete realisation of ones life, and its meanings. The old man, aware of his spiritual strength, of his dignity and his culture becomes the main character, the protagonist, the substantive of the human adventure. The adjective elderly, which express time going by, is transformed through experience, creative power, knowledge and self realisation into its corresponding and far more dignified substantive the elderly.

Si può avere una vecchiaia migliore? Riflessioni su alcune strategie di coping In the last few decades human life has progressively extended, which poses several questions about the future of new generations meant to support a great number of people outside the productive cycle. From a psychological viewpoint, there are two opposed conceptions of old age, one that emphasizes its negative aspects concerning physical and psychic deterioration, the other that highlights its positive features, based on the life-span construct which considers the individual’s development as a non-linear, dynamic itinerary likely to take place until the end. Here some coping strategies are being analyzed, considered particularly effective in facing those difficulties implied in this stage of life. They are: S.O.S. Automatisms; the Art of Forgetting; Continuing to Play; Selection; Optimization; Compensation; Thinking by Generations; Friendship and Affective Relationships.

Il ruolo della Psicologia sociale nei corsi di Laurea E-Learning Blended Within the framework of Cultural Psychology, Authors stressed the importance of Social Psychology discipline in e-learning blended University Courses. In particular, the focus is on the social-technological e-learning environment complexity and the e-learning people myth. Social Psychology conceptual models, like social identity and dialogic communication, are indispensable devices to analysed and understand that context and environment. Moreover it is important to consider how much time students and teacher spend to reach their objectives.

Problemi e soluzioni per lo scaling unidimensionale The first task in the construction of an unidimensional scaling is to assemble a set of stimuli which might work together to define one common line of inquiry. The second task is to choose a format for recording responses to these stimuli. When this situation arises, then there is the problem that row scores are expressed on a distorted scale. This paper underlines how rectify this transforming row scores to a logit metric.